Sydney CBD to Parramatta West Metro

According to media leaks, joint state and federal government study has been conducted into a West Metro between the the Sydney CBD and Parramatta in western Sydney ("Get ready: high-rise suburbs coming", January 6, 2009 and "Subway a highway to high-rise hell, say opponents", January 7, 2009, by Linton Besser and Wendy Frew, Sydney Morning Herald). The West Metro, underneath Parramatta Road would cost $8.1 billion. Like the proposed and cancelled North-West metro, the scheme is not for a European style metro, but a heavy underground railway.

The proposal appears far more feasible than previous abandoned Sydney railway plans. The planned stops at locations such as Leichhardt appear much better thought out than the previous metro (see map from Paramatta Council). The project would depend on funding from the Federal Government's Infrastructure Australia. The carefully worked out process IA has for selecting projects should help avoid the failures of previous NSW government rail and road projects.

Istanbul Kadiköy to Kartal Metro

International Railway Journal's October edition features "Building Istanbul’s Kadiköy - Kartal Metro" as an online supplement. In May I saw the work under way from the window of the Thessaloniki to Istanbul Train. At the time I assumed this was some of the work for the Marmary Rail Tunnel, but it is work to link up other parts of Istanbul's public transport.

The IRJ's articale is also interesting for the way it is provided as an online suppliment to the print jounal. The article is listed in the table of contents of the print edition, with a note saying "online edition". Presiumbly this is desinged to encourage people to read the online version. The online version is provided using Nxtbook Media, with Adobe Flash. This provides a facsimilie of the print edition, which is hard to use compared to ordinary web pages and which takes a long time to load on a slow Internet connection.